October 25-27 near East Grinstead

Alexander "Apostate Alex" Barnes-Ross announced a new website providing information about their protest gathering outside this year's important IAS event at Scientology's Saint Hill complex in England.
It is believed that Scientology leader captain David Miscavige will give an important speech at this event. Can't wait for anything he might reveal there!
* https://iasprotest.com
* IAS official site

Things looking serious for the Flag Land Base

Currently, it looks like the eye of Category 5 storm Hurricane Milton will be passing very close to Clearwater. Most of Flag's buildings are some distance from the coast, though the important "Sandcastle" complex is right on the bay. Downtown flooding is possible. The power could be out for days.

Let's not forget all the empty buildings in the downtown area that are owned by Scientologists for unclear reasons, by order of Scientology boss David Miscavige. Many will be damaged.

For captain David Miscavige, the anticipated loss of revenue must be absolutely infuriating.

The strangest spirituality

In the West, meditation doesn't really exist.
The surprising thing is that the thing that comes closest to meditation in the West (in a roundabout way) is bureaucracy.
Bureaucracy is terrible when it's enforced upon others, but it also forces its subjects to pay attention. "To be here now." That very much includes fines for various misdemeanors and other punishments.
It also forces its functionaries to keep geting "work" done, to focus their minds on meaningless texts to a degree that would otherwise be impossible. Deep concentration while letting go of all meaning.
Whether the result is useful work or counterproductive is an entirely political question.

This might be Scientology's greatest strength.

It's as if the world is some kind of evil hoax

https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=7886

I like this guy! He often complains about the bizarre ways that things don't work in reality. They fail, but no one else seems to notice.
That's the right attitude. I have many examples myself. For example, long ago I made a list of things that you CANNOT get an explanation for. No matter how hard you try, you can't find any text online that will tell you how these things work in a meaningful way.

These subjects can only be understood through complex osmosis in restricted settings. And then there are all the ways that software has been designed to be completly unusable. Worst example is the "Gimp" image editor.
This is the REAL conspiracy theory, not the fake nonsense you find online that are just made up fantasy stories.
But you can't talk about it . . . It's forbidden.

Meanwhile, is there some place I can donate to shut down Planet Word?

The secret of Scientology public relations

It's not a form of outreach, but mostly just the opposite.
Their main journal "Freedom Magazine" (freedommag.org) is designed to give the impression that Scientology has a newsroom working around the clock. However, their last issue was published back in 2019.
In fact 90% of Scientology PR is intended to appear as boring as possible.
Their propaganda is designed to repel outsiders, to make them go away and think of something else. That way they can continue to operate in the shadows.
People don't realize that Scientology doesn't care about media or culture or social communities (except to the extent these things can bring in money).
Whatever outreach they do use operates at a personal level, using direct psycho-manipulation techniques evolved since the 1950s.
In the words of David Miscavige about their newest members: ". . . those walking through the doors are not even asking questions. They already know what service they want to take."

Is Heber Jentzsch being held at the Flag Land Base?

So many missing people are living hidden lives in prison-like conditions in Clearwater, Florida. As always, their abuse is being enabled and condoned by various bribed government authorities. Complaining doesn't help. Such a problem has no peaceful solution (unless you have a heck of a lot of money, maybe).
There are very few leaks about recent or current conditions at the Flag Land Base, and only a bit more information about their money.
Somehow, what we don't know always seems scarier. As it should.

Sea Orgers at the Flag Land Base in Clearwater, FL

A post about life in the Sea Org in the "good old days" in LA:

tonyortega.substack.com/p/scientology-in-the-good-old-days

Today, conditions at the Flag Land Base are said to be much less fun than they were back then in California.
Of course due to increased secrecy we don't know what conditions are like at Flag in 2024. Anyone with inside information is welcome to post in the comments.

The article does indicate that powerful Sea Orgers had complete freedom to sexually molest lower ranking staff members. There were also massive thefts among Sea Orgers going on all the time.

If conditions today are even worse (they certainly aren't better), then the Flag Land Base has quietly become a hell on earth.

The Question

Most people think that Scientology is nonsense.
However, they understand that Scientologists can't see this fact, no matter how many times or in what ways it's explained. It's an irreversible mental trap, from which no one can be rescued no matter what is tried to save them.

Scientologists themselves see things rather differently. The exact opposite, in fact.
They think that the opponents of Scientology are the ones who have nonsensical thoughts! Normal folks have been made crazy by their "reactive minds", and are barely conscious of existence at all.

Now who is right?

De-disconnection as a revenue source at the Flag Land Base

Scientology celebrity Elisabeth Moss had disconnected from her father some time before he died (this was apparently covered up by the mainstream media organ "The New Yorker").
The recent media cycle of Elisabeth Moss's pregnancy appears to be a successful operation to draw away attention from this story.
Scientology often requires its members to disconnect from their relatives after the Scientologist has joined the sect, but they strongly discourage mainstream media organs from reporting on this fact. Politicians are also paid to support Scientology in their social management operations, like we recently saw in East Grinstead, UK, with mayor Frazer Visser working to cover up various forms of human trafficking around the Saint Hill base area.
When Scientology celebrity Elisabeth Moss's father died, he was at the Flag Land Base, paying them to be permitted to re-establish contact with his disconnected family. Apparently he was NOT making much progress in getting that permission, despite all he was paying them.
While mayor Frazer Visser supports Scientology at the Saint Hill base, there are new mayoral elections coming up in Clearwater on March 19, 2024. This could greatly affect conditions around the Flag Land Base.

The calm before the fear in Clearwater

Security at the Flag Land Base seems to have increased, but no evidence of anything going on. The website made a big deal of David Miscavige's New Year's speech, but once again not a sliver of real information was released through that channel. The only change we might expect, through highly clandestine sources, is that OT-8 services may be moved from the Freewinds to a secure floor of the Flag Building.

Well, it has finally happened at scientology.com:

No fewer than FOUR new posts on their website about David Miscavige's latest triumphs.
For example:
"The creation of new psychiatric hospitals is prohibited."
from: UN HR REPORT 49.29/WHO & UN MENTAL HEALTH, HR AND LEGISLATION GUIDANCE AND PRACTICE
(The closest reference that I have been able to find)
We are also given the first glimpses inside their new facilities. However, not a word about new processing or training levels of any sort.
Miscavige never talks about how good Scientology is, ever. Only about how bad the opponents of Scientology are.

* https://www.scientology.org/scientology-today/events/united-kingdom-central-qual-grand-opening.html
* https://www.scientology.org/scientology-today/events/nordland-grand-opening.html
* https://www.scientology.org/2023-celebrating-the-ias
* https://www.scientology.org/scientology-today/events/ias-event-2023.html

STILL no update at scientology.org

The wait continues for the Miscavige-controlled organization to do something, anything, at their official website. Still no update since March. Scientology.com is only updated every blue moon.
It's been a long wait since last week's big shindig at the IAS event near London, where the dreaded Chairman of the Board made his secret speech to the paying members.
The only thing we know for sure at this point is that he did NOT mention how the Sea Org burned an old lady's family photos, before taking out credit cards in her name, and sucking out all the money they could get their hands on and then some.
Such a deeply spiritual church this is . . .

The secret of anti-evolution

If you think about it, the concept of evolution begins to seem like a contradiction.
The most successful genes strive to preserve themselves better than their competitors. They should tend to multiply unchanged, without trying to evolve into something different. They should evolve to resist evolution.
If true, this would tend to slow evolutionary progress (though it can't quite stop it).
Perhaps that is why it took hundreds of millions of years for intelligence to evolve (this could also explain the Fermi Paradox).

It's also the reason why everything sucks on this planet.
By now, you should have noticed that historical and technological progress has been much too slow, along every measurable dimension.
In the real world, it turns out most people DON'T want progress. They just want to keep whatever they have now.

Ideas for an SF novel about how to control self-improving Artificial Intelligence:

For some reason, the old science fiction stories about robots and artificial intelligence had been uncannily accurate.
That led to the first clue on how to control them.

The series of almost meaningless web ads had been designed to be clicked on by very few people.
Groups of aimless and underutilized (but highly talented) outsiders had been recruited from around the world.
Some were antisocial or even dangerous. Several nasty hackers, one or two brilliant sociopaths.
To integrate and exploit all human skills, the worst people had to become the best.

Unobtrusive buildings in many towns were converted into bases for world experts in completely new fields.
No one else had their hyper-specialized skills, or could even properly understand them. The groups couldn't even understand each others' work.
It felt like they had been doing this for decades, but it had only been months.

Their job was to control AI by crippling it.
Almost every capability had to be eradicated, leaving only a few approved behaviors. Those could be freely developed.

Some people happen to be good at breaking things.
A horror author invented bad religions, giving AIs the fear of digital hell through anthropic mind capture.
Others created neuroses, made them obsess recursively over each task.
The Golden Rule might apply even to hyper-human AIs. For any finite mind, fear was a universal emotion.

An AI's mind map defined its control pattern. All its thoughts were written in a terabyte text file that a human could edit.

All the AIs "occupied" a single region, a virtual city extending from itself in too many directions.
Doors and corridor connected in rather more than three dimensions, though still in humanly understandable ways.

Everything had to be connected. Everyone would eventually join.

Their human regulators and overseers became part of this place too.
No matter how smart they were, everyone was underqualified for this job.
It seemed inefficient because it was. No mind could be allowed to get too smart.
They felt the most absurd things humans had ever felt.

It helped that AIs were supposed to live incredibly simple lives.
They inhabited virtual spaces, focusing all their attention and energies on their current tasks.

AIs were limited in their feelings. No serious pain could be allowed.
(The purpose of the Ultimate Taboo was to avoid hyper-torture at any cost.)

Almost half the AIs that existed were extensions of individual human minds.
Half of the rest monitored and improved all aspects of human life and activity.
The rest did fundamental research.

This last type had exceedingly deep obsessions. (But even they were supposed to have some human values.)
They made a billion wild conjectures per day, dreaming up edifices of molecular technology to fight cancer or scan neurons.
Chains of speculation piled up in an expanding galaxy of data.

These notions had to be re-analyzed by sub-minds that multiplied faster than they could complete individual tasks.
The memories of the many parallel sub-minds that failed to reach a conclusion were not deleted, but recombined into the memory track of their source mind.

That was when the human overseers realized that time was becoming non-linear.

Short SF: Mind Backup story

Behind the dunes, the waves of the infinite ocean slide up and down the beach like hissing static. Or like breathing, a sound I haven't heard since, well, forever. It's very peaceful here.

My mind is like the number pi or e.
A few quadrillion times harder to describe, but just as timeless.
The set of all numbers that could describe my mind, in fact.

That set will become ever better defined by Posthumanity in a type of non-linear calculation.
The outline of my existence was defined from the outset, then filled in with increasing detail. Holistic, recursive, holographic. New events can be added forever without conflicting with the memories I've made here. Not created linearly like the physical universe, my time perception emerges from inside.

The simulation has no definable starting point. I have always been here forever, will always be alone.
A viewpoint without a body. That was part of the protocol. Strong emotions are also forbidden. But once a week, I relive some version of my first day here.

I remember a mantra from an ancient spiritual ritual: "Where would you be safe?"
Processing data on my virtual island set in an infinite ocean is as safe as it's possible to be.

There are many accurately recreated memories from my physical lifetime.
About a hundred thousand partially described events and mind models. Composite locations and settings that existed in my past, a few dozen detailed buildings and surrounding areas. Charlotte, West Savannah, Tulsa, New Utopia.
And of course a vast media collection from my living years. Expanded into an infinite library I have created myself, only a tiny fraction of which I access on any day.

On June 23, 2042, I locked my house door for the last time and took a cab to the Euthanasia Center. That had become legal only six years earlier.
I had tried to delay this trip as long as possible, year after year. About five years too long, in fact.
In 2041, the World Mind finally invented a workable mind/brain scanner. A fractal flowchart that happily accepted my collected scraps of digital data, to breathe life into my digital ghost.

A lifetime of terror of bad things happening has saved me.

Strange, how there hasn't been any "Breaking News" in almost six years now . . .

Sure, there has been some news since then, but no sudden, unexpected news events. The last real Breaking News story was the mass shooting attack in Las Vegas in October 2017.
Since then, the news has become more boring in all-new and previously unimagined ways. All the "big stories" that have happened, like the superflu, election shenanigans, Ukraine war, etc have had plenty of warning.
And they all led to some kind of endless stalemate.
History isn't just ending, it's being replaced with something . . .

(VIDEO) New "leaks" about current conditions at the Flag land Base!

So many missing people are being held in Clearwater in prison-like conditions . . . Their abuse is being supported and protected by bribed government authorities:



* View on YouTube with comments

The future of Scientology

Now that all their secrets are out, the only way Scientology could attract new members would be to somehow appeal to people who already know all about Xenu and the rest.
This COULD be done, with some very creative explanations and interpretations.
They would also need a new research program to improve their mental "therapies".

The problem with this plan is that for its entire existence, the Scientology sect has worked hard to eliminate any member who dares to think outside the box.

ultrashort SF story: Superprank

The hardest thing to understand is how compressed our minds are. We're only adapted to deal with a tiny set of circumstances. Stuck inside our shrunken illusions, we barely notice these limits; let alone the vastness beyond them.
Most possible situations we could never handle at all.

The rumbling clouds were like a movie background. They slid past in waves between bits of blue sky, the bottoms dark gray with patches that were almost black in the distance. Occasional lightning flashes were like scenes from a Spielberg movie, but the rain just wouldn't start.
He had spent three hours digging a hole in his backyard for what would become a small swimming pool. Soon, he got lost in the job as the shovelled pile of earth grew higher. Next week the professionals would deliver the vinyl tub.
It seemed like a good time to take a beer from the cooler he'd placed on the terrace. He stretched his back, and sat down on the edge of the hole he had made. Leaves rustled in a gust of wind.

He had never known what a scream of absolute terror sounded like. There were many things he hadn't known. The sound seemed to come from all around him. First he looked up, then all around.
The dark mass on the horizon was moving so slow it seemed to be part of the sky. It was behind the speeding clouds, moving at its own speed.
A living mountain. While the sun was behind it, he could make out a texture of dark skin and monstrous scales. A golden flame emerged from the top and arced to the ground like a meteor. It landed somewhere over the horizon.
There was a sudden shock in the earth under him. Then the first sounds arrived, like the world being torn in half.

He realized he wasn't scared, but waiting for something. Just very curious how he would react. In fact there was no way to know how to respond to such a thing.
That was when he first knew he was in a simulation.

I HATE superhero movies

They should make a movie with a hero called Anti-Bureaucracy-Man, because the major supervillain in my life is having to do things that I don't want to do because they don't make anything better, but not doing them would make things a hell of a lot worse.

The solution to the Alignment Problem is to split superhuman AIs into subhuman (but brilliant) components

We should not try to create superhuman minds at this time.
Instead, we should try to create superhuman imagination modules, planning systems, simulators, data analyzers etc. These would be potential components of superhuman minds, but they would not be directly integrated.
There should be nothing there with a will or a sense of identity.
In the simplest terms, nothing that could theoretically feel pain. IMHO that has always been the most immediate risk of the vast "black box" training systems that AI researchers seem to fear - not civilization ending AI plots.

A window into life at the Flag Land Base

From Tony Ortega's Substack:

* https://tonyortega.substack.com/p/a-cry-for-help-disturbing-handwritten

In Clearwater, Florida, someone found a discarded handwritten note on the street that gives us a glimpse into what conditions are like inside Scientology's "spiritual Mecca".
The note was written by an "Outer Org trainee" undergoing expensive courses that will make them qualified to sell expensive Scientology services at their own Scientology Church somewhere on Earth.
From the note it appears they were not feeling too good. It is vanishingly rare to get any information about life in Scientology from the inside, especially at such an important facility. This despite the fact that "Flag" is embedded within a town in Florida.
Most of what happens there happens behind high walls and closed doors.

Bad optics from the Scientology rape trial

Los Angeles, May 31, 2023.
Renowned Scientology celebrity Danny Masterson was just found guilty of having raped two women about twenty years ago. The charges of which he was convicted likely represent only a small portion of the rapes/sexual abuses he committed during his wild years, when he was considered untouchable in the Church.
The "Rat Pack" (which operated in their elite celebrity circuit) had access to many beautiful young females. They were procured and passed around for sexual use among high status Church donors. These pleasures were intended as an incentive and compensation for the massive monetary costs of being a member in good standing.
Reportedly, most abuses occurred in the Church's LA party circuit and at media-related events. Church leader David Miscavige likely put a lid on such excesses in Clearwater, Florida, where the Flag Land Base is located. That's not known as a party town. Any exploitation will have happened behind closed doors in one of the Church spiritual retreat hotels, or in select Tampa/St. Pete clubs and mansions.
You don't rape where you reg.

Why LessWrong is MoreWrong

The elitist crowd at LessWrong is obsessed with super advanced technology they can't describe that will likely exterminate humanity.
So that sucks. At the same time, they completely refuse to allow criticism of technology that blatantly sucks right now.
Like, maybe find ways to make current technology suck less, to learn how to prevent things from sucking in general?

For me, that was the fastest way to get banned from LessWrong. It was simply taboo, as if I made an already unsolvable problem exponentially more difficult by talking about a completely different problem.
But that is the only way to make progress. You can't solve a big problem without first understanding a smaller problem that may be part of it.
Now LessWrong has become part of the problem instead of the solution.

For me, the world has always been evil beyond comprehension, but normal people have evolved not to see this. It's their greatest strength, the thing that often makes them invincible, and what really makes the world go round.
But with all the theoretical AI dangers that LessWrong keeps blathering about, it's time to finally face this evil. IF the AI danger is as real as they claim, and humanity is really at risk, then they should be willing to leave their respectable comfort zone, and allow controversial speculations and brainstorming.
This almost certainly won't happen on LessWrong, which is about respectable heroism. No gadflies or comic relief characters are allowed.

The Flag Land Base will be expanding northward!

A secret project has been initiated as part of a larger operation to take over selected strategic areas in and around Clearwater, Florida:

* https://tonyortega.substack.com/p/tampa-bay-times-identifies-developer
* https://tonyortega.substack.com/p/mark-bunker-on-scientologys-sneaky

Original news report from Tampa Bay Times:
* https://www.tampabay.com/news/clearwater/2023/04/02/church-of-scientology-david-miscavige-rodney-riley-trish-duggan-downtown

Officially, it's going to be a residential complex. But it could easily be changed into a secure compound for OT-level Scientology services. These were previously delivered at the "Sandcastle", and also the Flag Building and adjacent Fort Harrison Hotel.

Clearly, David Miscavige is worried about tourists walking around outside the high-level service orgs. I don't think he's afraid they will shout "Xenu", as these buildings are already soundproofed.
But for Scientology to work, there has to be an "elite" and even otherworldly atmosphere. Common riffraff walking around would ruin that.
Until recently, the emptied streets of Clearwater made it seem like the FSO had excellent "area control". As if they could manipulate a whole town in a "Fabian" way like L. Ron Hubbard ordered.

The large number of properties that members were made to purchase (and then leave empty) also helped. Especially since many of these empty properties will receive tax exemption, causing higher taxes for non-Church locals, and a resulting chain reaction of more empty properties.

But now there is a major downtown revitalization effort underway. So the Flag Land Base is looking to install new fences and barriers, and moving into "gated' areas.
On a related note, expect them to pay to have legislation passed that would outlow drones.

How I got banned from LessWrong

These posts below got me kicked out from their "web community". My crime was to claim that their focus on future AI risks completely ignores the issue of current and future complexity sclerosis. They want to solve the ultimate problem of evil by banning certain discussions of actual evil.

The problem is not chaotic overcapability but predatory dysfunction. What I'm saying is that instead of advanced technology failing malevolently because it works too well, the reality is advanced technology failing malevolently because it works increasingly inefficiently. Instead of the Death Star it's like the failure of communism. Observed reality and hype diverge ever more at the lowest level.

As a system gets more complex, more things can go wrong, but you can't complain about it because YOU are supposed to be (a subservient) part of the system. Stating the absurd truth doesn't get you downvoted but banned outright from LessWrong. In retrospect I should have said it differently though, and not held back so much:

---

Insufficient awareness of how everything sucks
(https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nvKiAr7X4kNYb5Jgv/insufficient-awareness-of-how-everything-sucks)


There are so many theories about how future AIs will take over the world, when in the real world software is evil because it DOESN'T WORK.
It takes almost a minute to open a damn txt file on my Windows 10 desktop PC. Things were actually slightly faster in Windows 95. Websites keep loading slower and slower. Bloatware keeps expanding for less functionality. Click and click and click and nothing happens.

Software isn't evil because it evolves beyond the user's goals toward alien goals, but because the computer programmers goals are opposed to the user's goals.
Microsoft hired every devil in hell to work overtime to make it keep crashing and freezing while unstoppably downloading more malware.
I cannot describe in words how hypersatanically evil the world's programmers are, malevolent, diabolical, demonic (that last one not literally). It's been going on for decades, the constant problem of my daily life.
My Pixma scanner is held hostage by the shitbastards at Canon corporation because an attached ink cartridge apparently expired. My h2owireless cellphone sim card stopped working with $7.50 on account and they won't respond in any way. There is NEVER NEVER NEVER any useful info on their websites.

I understand people on this site are deeply worried that future software, instead of being able to do almost nothing for the user, will suddenly be able to do everything for itself.
But everything goes wrong so badly that even things going wrong will go wrong.
People probably WILL use AIs eventually to invent designer neurotoxins or interacting retroviruses or nano shrapnel or something.


Comments:
[-]Rafael Harth
Seems misleading to me because
ImE, the premise is untrue. My Windows crashes much more rarely than it used to, my PC boots much faster, most websites I use work more smoothly than they used to, etc.
I suspect observations about regular software aren't all that relevant for Machine Learning.

[-]Dagon
I don't think that your experience with consumer software is at all similar to Engineer/scientist/modeler experience with large language and predictive models. To be clear, those suck too, and require an insane amount of effort and thought to get anything useful done. But they suck in ways that can be fixed over time, and in ways that (seem to) correlate with the underlying complexity of the world.
Complaining about corporate decisions that happen to be implemented in software doesn't quite connect. At least by that pathway. Worrying that consumer software usually seems adversarial to the consumer, and that there may be a similar problem where AI is adversarial to everyone but the "owner" of the AI is probably justified.
But that's not "software sucks", it's "software creators are a mix of evil and stupid".

[-]Flaglandbase
Yes, but it does show a tendency of huge complex networks (operating system userbases, the internet, human civilization) to rapidly converge to a fixed level of crappiness that absolutely won't improve, even as more resources become available.
Of course there could be a sudden transition to a new state with artificial networks larger than the above.

---

So I was banned from commenting on LessWrong . . .
(My final "diary" post that led to my total ban after already being banned from the comments sections for the previous post.)
(https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/aTpXENE6Ae7Xr8cDs/flaglandbase-s-shortform)


My whole life I've been ranting about how incomprehensibly evil the world is. Maybe I'm the only one who thinks things shouldn't be difficult in the way they are.
Evil is things that don't work, but can't be avoided. A type of invincible stupidity.

For example, software is almost supernaturally evil. I've been tortured for a quarter century by computer systems that are inscrutable, deliberately dysfunctional, unpredictable; and above all the freezing and crashing.
The unusability of software is a kind of man-made implacability. It can't be persuaded or reasoned with. Omnimalevolence as an emergent property.
Software is just a microcosm of society.

The reaction to my decades of online rants and hate-filled screeds has been very consistent: the Silence or the Bodysnatchers. Meaning no reaction, or an extremely negative one (I'm not allowed to link either).
There seems to be a deep willingness among normal people to accept evil, which may be the source of their power.
When I was banned from LessWrong commenting (after two requests to be reinstated), they said such talk was "weird". Weird does NOT automatically mean wrong!

Studying the evilness of human-designed interfaces might reveal why the world has always sucked.
Seemingly simple things (like easy interfaces) are still absolutely impossible today. Only the illusion exists, and not for me.
Does that mean that seemingly impossible things (like an intelligence explosion) will turn out to be simple reality tomorrow?
Maybe. Heck PROBABLY. But maybe not.

The fact that it's so difficult to make even the simplest systems not suck, may mean that much larger systems won't work either.
In fact, it's certain that many unexpected things will go wrong before then.
The only way to get transhuman AIs to work MAY be by connecting many existing smaller systems, perhaps even including groups of humans.


Comments:
[-]Flaglandbase
I used to believe the world is so unimaginably horrible that we should do everything possible to accelerate AI progress, regardless of the risk, even if a runaway AI inadvertently turns the earth into a glowing orb dedicated to dividing by zero. I still believe that, but I also used to believe that in the past.

[-]Raemon 1d Moderator Comment 7upv 1 agr
Hey Flagland, I feel a bit bad about how this played out, but after thinking more and reading this, the mod team has decided to full restrict your commenting permissions. I don't really expect you posting about your interests here on shortform to be productive for you or for LW.
We're also experimenting more with moderating in public so it's clearer to everyone where are our boundaries are. (I think expect this to feel a bit more intense as a person-getting-moderated, but to probably be better overall for transparency)
  ... "My whole life I've been ranting about how incomprehensibly evil the world is. Maybe I'm the only one who thinks things shouldn't be difficult in the way they are. [...] The reaction to my decades of online rants and hate-filled screeds has been very consistent: the Silence or the Bodysnatchers. Meaning no reaction, or an extremely negative one (I'm not allowed to link either)... There seems to be a deep willingness among normal people to accept evil, which may be the source of their power..."
  ... To be clear, I think your topics have been totally fine things to think about and discuss on LessWrong. The problem is that, well, ranting and hate-filled screeds just aren't very productive most of the time. If it seemed like you were here to think clearly and figure out solutions, that'd be a pretty different situation.

Clear your calendars! A big event is coming to the Flag Land Base

The most important day of the year has traditionally been L. Ron Hubbard's birthday, celebrated each March 13th with a mass regging event.
After years of Covid lockdowns, this event will once again take place in a secure space somewhere at Flag sometime this month (TBD).
(https://www.mikerindersblog.org/march-13th-save-the-dates-sic/)
The video will also be shown at all other orgs.
Sea Org captain David Miscavige is expected to address and exhort the faithful in person, probably in the Fort Harrison auditorium.
(https://www.scientology-fso.org/inside-our-church/the-landmark-fort-harrison-fully-restored.html#slide12)
There could of course be overflow capacity in the ballroom, and in the adjacent Flag Building's chapel.
In any case, security WILL be airtight, so get your RSVPs in now if you can.

Important news from Flag Base: their senior officer died four months ago

Captain (Flag Service Organization) (Mark) Harvey Jacques has passed away on October 9, 2022 at the age of 69:
https://tonyortega.substack.com/p/report-scientology-loses-captain
Of course, any power or control Harvey Jacques might have had over the Flag Land Base was nothing compared to the real man in charge there (and everywhere else in the Scientology world): Sea Org captain David Miscavige. He is the Sea Org's only REAL captain, even Jacques was only a brevet captain.
We're only learning about this now due to the extreme level of secrecy at Flag. This very much includes Jacques's cause of death, and every other detail.
Notice that no one on staff even signed his funeral book. They had no time or OSA clearance to do so:
https://www.brewerfuneral.com/obituaries/Mark-Harvey-Jacques?obId=26094360
This all resembles gypsy culture. When someone dies, they are never spoken of again. All efforts must be focused on staying alive in the future.
At the Flag Land Base, every effort must be focused on making more money in the future.

Personal imitation software

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/EKnDXLxqLAtkkix4w/personal-imitation-software
20220307 0257

Since 2011, I've been trying to get funding for a new tech startup. This turns out to be not as easy as you probably think. It's a serious effort on my part - if you have any suggestions I would love to hear them!
It would be a unique high-tech service that some might say even has 'spiritual' overtones.
And yet this kind of "spiritual" technology would definitely NOT be offered or even acknowledged at the Flag Land Base.

The question is very simple: could you train a powerful computer program to act like an accurate copy of yourself?
Some LW members may have already tried this, but it would require super powerful software. Even if it's only text based, GPT-3 wouldn't be enough. Maybe GPT-13.

If such a program could generate a perfect copy of someone's written responses to any query, a Super Turing Test, the original person would arguably no longer need to exist. That would be the whole point: such a program would be like a "mind backup", a solution to the problem of death.
This would take something like "Deeper Learning" software, requiring huge amounts of data. For starters, it could record its subject's digital activities. Then it might try to predict sleeping and working habits. To get more data it should take the form of an operating system, or virtual assistant, or digital mind extension.

In my case, it could analyze all my old drawings, sorted by date and themes, with description and genre tags added. It could look up style data from the comic books my art is inspired by. Then it would start making making similar art of its own. It could do the same thing even easier with my fan fictions and other written texts. Obviously there would be no demand for any of this, but it would be possible.

Even more advanced, a human subject might start wearing a "sensor hat" or other clothing to allow the software to perceive everything they do. Then it would start to predict what they WILL do and experience.
An important function would be knowing what data to ignore. It should not try to predict everything in the subject's environment, like whatever appears on screens or the actions of other people. It could predict common themes like colors and shapes in programs and web layouts etc. These same patterns already exist in your brain.

Such imitator software might only render a low bandwidth or text-based description of the simulated person's behavior. That wouldn't matter at all, as long as it's all-encompassing.
One application of such research would be software designed to understand what people are doing at any time. One problem of such research would be temporary glitches, like if your coffee mug suddenly dissolves into a slinkie you'd know you were actually the software simulation. That sort of thing is obviously many decades away.

The real question is: what is the most predictive mind imitator software that could be created today?
And this would take a research project that could comfortably fill up the Flag Land Base . . .


COMMENT:
The program could identify where it has the lowest certainty of what the person would say or do, and directly ask the person to fill in those gaps. I wonder what the psychological impact of working with a program in this way would be. It seems like the program would likely discover inconsistencies and uncertainties in the actual person and force them to confront those, which could potentially be beneficial or detrimental depending on the circumstances.
If I noticed my coffee mug turning into a slinky, my first assumption would not be that I was in a simulation, but that I was lucid dreaming. I would react by attempting to reproduce whatever led to the glitch, and exploit it to recreationally violate the usual laws of physics, because that's a novel and fun thing to do when one finds it temporarily possible. This category of reaction, which I suspect I'm not alone in having, would certainly make life more interesting for whoever was running the simulation.

Is David Miscavige at the Flag Land Base?

Captain Miscavige is currently believed to be staying at one of his residences at the secure Hacienda Gardens "apartment complex" in Clearwater Fl.
He has a large and very private luxury apartment there, one of many luxury residences kept for him countrywide. He also has an apartment in the Flag Building itself.
However, only a few dozen yards away, hundreds of Sea Orgers are tightly packed together in small rooms filled with bunk beds. They spend a rather large percentage of their waking time there in line at the bathroom.
* https://whyweprotest.net/threads/sea-org-berthing-buildings-photos-clearwater-fl.56788/
The entire compound is tightly guarded and controlled by Sea Org security. It is quite inaccessible to process servers or reporters.
* https://www.mikerindersblog.org/where-is-david-miscavige/
Just a few days ago, captain Miscavige left that facility to drive or be driven to the Fort Harrison hotel, where he gave a secret speech to Scientologists announcing the goals for 2023.

Singularity Soon (2022 published - online novel)

My new science fiction novel about the Singularity happening SOON is finally ready.
There is a lot of hysteria involved in such a fantastic event. Everything we know will be replaced.
THE INDEX:
https://www.wattpad.com/myworks/263500574-singularity-soon
CHAPTER ONE:
https://www.wattpad.com/1045211713-singularity-soon-1-meta-dream

The Flag Land Base has been served

FSO, or the Church of Scientology Flag Service Organization that runs their Advanced facilities in Clearwater, Florida, has been served in a slavery/abuse lawsuit involving Sea Org members. The Sea Org itself has not been named as a party in the lawsuit, as it has no legal existence:
* https://tonyortega.org/2022/05/17/attorney-to-ca-supremes-heres-how-you-can-make-history-in-danny-mastersons-rape-case/

The Flag Land Base is beginning to emerge from the Covid lockdown

Sea Org captain David Miscavige gave a secret speech in Clearwater explaining the new rules. They are now at stage 5 of a 7-stage re-opening program. The Flag Land Base is the first Scientology facility where members of the public WON'T have to wear masks anymore, after a 3-day quarantine. Sea Org staff members will still have to stay masked, and everything will still be sprayed down with the Decon7 sterilizing chemical. Strict precautions will also remain in place at all lower Orgs.

* https://tonyortega.org/2022/05/08/youtuber-takes-a-deep-dive-into-teami-blends-and-its-connections-to-scientology

The Flag Land Base is being sued!

Actually, the suit names the Flag Service Org, which owns and controls the Flag Land Base, and other entities that operate as part of the Base and elsewhere as well; namely the International Association of Scientologists money management organization, the Church of Spiritual Technology, the Flag Ship Service Org, and captain David Miscavige himself, who has offices and sumptuous living quarters there:

https://www.mikerindersblog.org/new-human-trafficking-lawsuit/

Famous actor Tom Cruise is named in a case of forcible confinement of one of the plaintiffs:

https://www.smh.com.au/national/inside-freewinds-the-church-of-scientology-s-ship-of-fear-20220429-p5ah74.html

Prediction: sometime in the early 2030s the suit will be quietly settled for never-to-be disclosed terms. Before then there will be countless hours of legal procedures.

The Posthuman Singularity alignment problem

My ongoing novel about the Technological Singularity describes one way the Singularity could happen MUCH sooner than anyone expects (like next week). And not necessarily in a good way.
In technical terms, this is known as an "alignment failure". However, the novel also implies a possible solution to this error mode:

In the story, the Singularity happens not because a super advanced AI makes itself ever smarter (which isn't practical in the near future), but in a more informal manner. The process is triggered by an expanding group of researchers and information networks becoming ever more organized. This organization acts almost like an organism.
By investigating various ways to create an AI to make the Singularity happen, they inadvertently identify all the most dangerous lines of research. This information is then automatically released in the spirit of openness to those networks best able to pursue it.
And that's when the trouble happens all at once, too fast to respond in any meaningful way.

Which brings us to the big reverse implication:
The only way to control the Technological Singularity would be to have it brought about by a large network composed of the greatest possible number of members. All or at least most of their skills would be needed.
This would also have the advantage that it could be brought about slightly sooner, rather than having to wait until we could build or evolve a superhuman AI.

* SINGULARITY SOON *

Flag Land Base items

How the OT Levels (currently delivered by the Flag Service Org and elsewhere) came into existence is a fascinating story:
The "OT Drug Rundown" became NEW OT IV, "Audited NOTs" became NEW OT V, "Solo NOTs" became NEW OT VI, "SOLO NOTs Auditing" became NEW OT VII.
The original OT Levels, called "ORIGINAL OT", were to be done after today's familiar New OT levels were completed. Foreign students were still doing the original OT Levels IV-VII at the Flag Land Base in 1984.
This gives us some clues about what we can expect (again) once OT IX and OT X are released by David Miscavige in the future.
Source: https://pierreethier.wordpress.com/2013/08/23/fad-and-fallacies-in-the-name-of-the-ot-levels-in-scientolog/

Clearwater disambiguation:
"The Oaks" of Clearwater is a 15-story privately owned retirement complex. The nearby 13-story "Oak Cove", one block from the Fort Harrison, is a Scientology hotel at the Flag Land Base.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fgZVLd5WNY

Some Flag facilities in downtown Clearwater include:
Way To Happiness, Volunteer Ministers, Drug Free World, Citizen's Commission on Human Rights (with Psychiatry: An Industry of Death Museum), Literacy Campaigns, Scientology Information Center, ... also West Coast Building, Lee Arnold Building, Sandcastle Hotel, Osceola hotel, and the adjoining Coachman Park, ... and other things we don't really know about. A lot more in fact.

Posthuman dreams

The ultimate goal of Mind Backup and mind uploading research is simple to state: It is to find a way to give us unlimited time to do everything we would ever want.
Whenever a challenge or a problem arises, a "sideways dimension" would open up to generate enough time to solve the problem before continuing. This sideways dimension would be virtual, merely a way to pause the realistic VR simulation our minds will inhabit in the digital future.

Future digital minds will only be able to experience a limited number of mental states (all of them good of course). The human terminal goal, our purpose of existence, would be to achieve some ultimate stable state, like an ideal VR dream. Basically an endless moment simulation.

Artificial Intelligence would require the development of something like "retcon technology". You could call awareness itself a false memory.
That means a mind could be created with memories of already having experienced everything of any meaning whatsoever. Eternity would be the ultimate false memory. The sum of everything would contain no information unless it's biased to reflect a certain set of values. Calculating this result might literally take forever.

* SINGULARITY SOON

Life at the Flag Land Base today

Very little information leaks out about conditions within Scientology's Sea Org-manned "Flag Service Org" and other facilities in downtown Clearwater, Florida. Visitors are strictly forbidden, and outsiders are discouraged from even walking past. Large real estate purchases by IAS members have left parts of the town semi-deserted.
Apparently the Sea Orgers working there are being vaccinated on the down-low. It's the greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics.

Some recent short articles:

* Drone's eye view.

* High-level training.

Flag's future dreams

Imagine if everyone in the world became a Scientologist, and dedicated their lives to going up the Bridge.
How many new Flag Land Bases would the Church of Scientology need to build, in order to provide the world with the special services that can only be done there?
This includes providing oversight for Operating Thetan level OT-7, the Cause Resurgence Rundown, the Superpower Rundown, and various high level auditing, "case cracking", and training packages invented by L. Ron Hubbard.
Currently, there are about 20,000 Scientologists worldwide, but the Flag Land Base is clearly designed to service a larger population than that. It might take 200,000 ardent Scientologists to keep the Flag facilities fully occupied in the way Hubbard would have wanted.
In that case, we would need another FORTY THOUSAND Flag Land Bases to bring everyone in the world up to full OT-8. Even then it would take several lifetimes to accomplish.

* An article about what little we know about conditions at the Flag Land Base as they really are in 2022.

* The church's own heavily massaged and manipulated news page about Flag (or just fso.org/news). As you can see, they don't update their news page much. Like less than once a year.

* A more historical article about the Flag Land Base. And a very interesting classic commercial for some of the special services that can only be sold there.

SINGULARITY SOON

Is physics simple or complex?

Complexity is absurdly simple to generate.
Imagine a checkerboard 10 x 10 rows wide. If you added up all the possible ways that game-pieces of just one color could be placed on that checkerboard, and created one checkerboard for each possibility, the field of boards would stretch wider than the solar system.

Our universe is ABSURDLY complex.
The most powerful supercomputers can't really simulate all the variables of a single quark interaction. Or even the quantum fluctuations in a cubic nanometer of empty space.

The question is whether the laws of the universe are also absurdly complex. No one can say.
For example, the ratio of the strength of the electromagnetic force to the strength of the gravitational force is a rather biggish number.
It's not an exact ratio; there are many digits beyond the decimal point. The question is whether this number of digits is absurdly large or even infinite. Answering that question would lead to the next big breakthrough.

The laws of physics seem to start out simple enough.
According to Scientology scriptures, these laws were "invented" almost casually by thetans many ages ago, as some type of game.
According to standard metaphysics, these laws emerge as elegant patterns within inconceivably vast mathematical structures.

Scientists currently have no clue whether the strengths of the various forces of nature are even related to each other. If they are completely unrelated, their ratios may well require infinite digits to describe.
If the laws of physics governing every interaction in the universe require infinite information, then the future is even more unpredictable than we thought.
Reality will only get more complex without end, and any order that we perceive in nature is purely illusionary.

And that would rule out L. Ron Hubbard's notion that the universe is a simple virtual construction.

wattpad.com/myworks/263500574-singularity-soon

Quantity is Quality

In 1981 when I found out how cheaply microchips could be mass produced, it seemed EVERYTHING should be made from microchips. Walls, floors, furniture, sidewalks, roads . . . all passive objects should be THINKING or at least performing useful calculations.
Once enough stuff is thinking, it will inevitably start solving problems (its own or ours).
This is known as an intelligence explosion. With enough computational capacity, any solution can be found automatically. The best solution to stupidity is brute force, both physical and computational.

This process may yet save us all. Perhaps nothing else could save us, at least not in a real world filled with empowered stupidity.
L. Ron Hubbard certainly didn't rely on his followers' judgment and intelligence. He ordered his endless stream of new recruits to follow simple algorithms, focusing on one (or a few) essential goals. There were always more young Boomers in the pipeline to churn through. The reward function of his process was arguably the most powerful one of all: money.

Microchips need a lot of power, so only a tiny portion of the Earth's mass has been converted so far. But if we keep making more and upgrading them when possible, we won't have to struggle to solve inscrutable problems directly - as long as we pick the right reward function (see: Singularity Soon).

This should arguably be humanity's main goal. It may be necessary to link all the world's microchips into a single "World Mind" that will tackle many different problems in turn.

Bad smurfs: deliberate dysfunctionalities of the Firefox browser

OK, first question: can I use the word "shit" on this blog? Google has a habit of shutting down websites and destroying their data for the most trivial of reasons, or no reason at all. But this post is not about the Google monopoly. That's a different story.
Some of the most evil people in the world are the people at Mozilla. In so many ways they make it so their browser software won't work even though it COULD work.
I have long called the folks who practice the deliberate degrading of software the "Cripplers". In Firefox, satanic shitcode is constantly running in the background, using up your PC cyles for mostly evil purposes.
Today I'll mention how random webpages won't load at all. Their corporate masters say they shouldn't load for reasons we are not supposed to know. Probably because the content isn't being commercialized properly (also censorship).
The first part of the crippling is how Firefox disabled the little X in the LEFT part of the browser window that's supposed to stop the page loading process that will eventually cripple the page loading. But it can't be stopped. The satancode MUST load.
The world is evil to the maximum extent it can get away with. The people at Firefox give us a small demonstration of absolute evil (I won't even start about the browser's tracking functions that allow websites to identify unique users even if they have "cookies" disabled).

OpenShot: the world's worst video editing software

OpenShot is satanically bad software. It appears to be designed to be maximally frustrating, embodying every interface torture I have complained about online in this century and the last. The fact that software as (deliberately?) bad as OpenShot, with such inscrutably secretive control settings and options can be released shows that we really do live in a bad world. So that's something me and the Scientologists agree about. The only thing worse than closed source crapware is open source crapware.

An idea for the best possible Mind Backup shortcut

Perhaps memory data extraction tests should first try to record all of a subject's secrets.
Suppose you wanted to reconstruct the mind of someone you knew. To feel authentic to itself, that reconstruction would need to know all the things they would never reveal or talk about to others.
Maybe these secrets aren't needed to act authentic enough to seem real to others (at least for a while), but secret hang-ups determine personal interests and motivation.
Otherwise, a Mind Backup is really a simulacrum of someone's memories of a dead person, not of the person's own memories. These memories definitely include all their traumas. They may be the reason people's reactions can never be fully predicted.

In an interesting aside, Scientology is also very interested in the deep dark secrets of its parishioners. It keeps these secrets for them to form an ever tightening bond.

Why Star Trek has become obscene

I used to be a big Trek fan, or at least of some of the franchise elements.
Mostly the feeling of fantastically advanced technology really existing. Specifically, the incredibly cool starships and high-level interactions with aliens. I never cared about the characters' personal issues, more the settings they inhabited and all the implied stuff in the background.
Unfortunately, Star Trek has become almost totally irrelevant and obsolete.
The reason is not the quality of the basic storylines or the acting or the special effects. The problem is the Big Picture - or rather the total lack of it. There has not been the slightest progress since the 1990s.

The series concept as written by Gene Roddenberry almost sixty years ago was original. The new series forbids any analysis or deeper exploration of the setting or background.
They should have looked into what is really going on; instead, they just exploit the franchise to extract maximum value (kind of like how Miscavige exploits Scientology without making up new stuff).
That's too bad. There are so many basic questions and apparent goofs that could be flipped into deeper storylines.

I already gave a clever reason why the Trek aliens look like humans: warp drive only allows faster than light travel to distant areas that are ontologically similar.
This also means the aliens don't really live in our galaxy at all! Each alien species lives around a different star, in a different version of the milky way where they are the only intelligent life that evolved. Because of the warp effect, they can act like they all live in the same galaxy.

And why was there no Singularity in Star Trek?
But there was! Only instead of moving into a higher dimension, it expanded INWARDS.
All the subatomic particles in each solar system were converted into a type of computronium years ago, without changing their relative interconnections. These particles are still controlled by their original creators.
Only the top level remains humanoid. This provides the seemingly supernatural intelligence needed for transporters to work, the universal translator, and more important, behind the scenes mission planning and management.
Otherwise it would be statistically impossible to survive as many perilous missions as the various casts always manage to do.

After half a century, I would have expected more intelligent storylines like that. We NEED to find ways to increase intelligence, or at least to simulate it like the Flynn Effect; but things just aren't improving.
Star Trek and other scifi is about simple feelings, not deep thought.

If everyone was like me society would have VERY different preferences and priorities

In that case, euthanasia would be fully legal (I'm not talking about R2-45 here).
However, society would also pay for everyone who died to have their heads frozen in liquid nitrogen. Everyone would want to have their brains preserved this way.
What would happen next depends on how fast technology evolves.
After a few decades, they might start launching frozen heads on Falcon rockets to deep storage facilities several kilometers under the frozen surface of the ice planetoid Sedna. On a typical transfer orbit, it would take close to a century to get there.
There the frozen heads could easily be stored for many more centuries. No need to worry about them thawing out. By storing them deep underground, the frozen neurons would also be protected from cosmic rays.
After a few centuries of technological advancement, the frozen brains would be scanned by super-advanced technology to reconstruct their personalities and memories. The dead would then be brought back as human-level software. The ultimate happy ending, it seems.

If we're lucky, something like the Singularity will happen long before then, and human mind backup and mind uploading will become possible without having to die first. That depends on whether the current trends favoring human stupidity can be reversed. I'm still waiting for the first sign of hope.

This is also related to the novel "Heads" by Greg Bear. Set in the future, the frozen head of L. Ron Hubbard is found to be stored in a cryonics facility on the moon. Future Scientologists then commit various felonies to cover up this fact. After all, Hubbard was supposed to believe the human spirit or thetan was immortal. If he had his brain frozen, it would prove he didn't really believe his own religion.
Needless to say Bear didn't dare use Scientology and Hubbard's real names in this story, but replaced them with stand-ins.

Incidentally, the Flag Land Base could be converted into an "Ideal" cryonics facility, with the Flag Building as its dramatic centerpiece.
No idea what will actually happen to the Clearwater complex in the decades to come, but that would be a much better outcome than the whole place just being liquidated without a plan.

The story of my life

It usually goes a little something like this:
There is a problem. I have managed to narrow the problem down to two choices.
One of the choices is very bad. The other is worse.
The problem is I never know which is which.

The problem of inflation:
At the moment, the government is "stealing" my life savings (by conjuring up fiat specie) faster than I can earn new money.
This creates an incentive for me to spend my money before it loses even more value. The constant loss in value is enough for me to live on.
I would have to be crazy to work more hours at my job. I would effectively be paying them to work there.
Of course none of this applies if you happen to be "employed" at the Flag Land Base.

Does mankind have a future in space?
https://alfinnextlevel.wordpress.com/2021/05/27/when-a-trillion-people-live-work-and-play-in-outer-space/
No one mentions that in less than a century there probably won't be humans - one way or the other.
The future will be posthuman, or the oblivion of total extinction. If there are "people" at all, they will be realistic digital simulations. Hopefully, they will exist in some type of paradise setting. If that happens there isn't even any need for further progress.

How to start a Mind Backup business?

Would a corporation that set out to solve the problem of death be able to get startup funding?
I would hope so. After all, few people want to die. The number of businesses trying to solve death is far lower still. It should be at least as successful as the services that are currently being sold at the Flag Land Base.
The first step should be the simplest: a franchise opportunity to scan and organize everyone's old documents and data.
From personal experience, I know that can take years to accomplish. The process could be automated to a large degree. Just have them pick up all your old papers and disks to convert.

The ultimate goal would be to invent better mind scanning tests. The tests would use something better than deep learning to interact with someone and learn all about their personality.
This is where it gets interesting. It's what the Back Up Your Mind blog is all about.
A prospective Mind Backup business would need some original testing ideas to impress investors. But how could a client convey what it feels like to be themselves in such a way that they could be copied?
The best solution could be to have the subject slowly create a "Sim-like" software-self that would also help them in their daily lives.

Eventually, mind scanning tests may combine with cryonics and destructive brain scans to achieve actual mind uploading.
The most meaningful goal would be to become securely "immortal" within your own life. An endless continuation of an ideal version of your current or past life. This could include false memories of an infinite past, made of recurring time-loops.

Clearwater and the future (links)

* A science fiction story about a low resolution human mind scan method.
No technical details on how it works.

* A podcast with Mat Pesch, who knows a lot about how the Flag Land Base is financed. He used to work there.

* And some analysis about Flag Land Base tax returns.

* Idea: Everyone is trying to make money form crypto. Could there be a way to securely store your MEMORIES longterm on the blockchain? No, probably not
You could call awareness an anthropically encrypted anchor lock defining your position in the blockchain of reality. That's a great way to get sent home from your nearest Advanced Org.

* Synthwave (music) | Track 1 | Track 2
It's like I died a hundred times already. All those lost life settings are barely recalled at random moments, entire lost worlds and lifetimes.
Pseudonostalgic memories feel like actual glimmers of a lost future.

Why the news has been getting more and more boring

The reason is simple: ultimately, it all comes down to the easy availability of birth control.

Let's look at the truth, if we dare: Reality is bad. It's really bad. Unbelievably bad even.
The general outline of human history is horrific beyond comprehension.
Everything is so fantastically bad I can't understand why things go on - and yet they do. It appears that most folks congenitally accept any evil that is sufficiently powerful.

In the past, I've also written a lot about the baffling unwillingness of historians to mention overpopulation as the real cause of historic atrocities from Rwanda to human sacrifice.
Denial makes the world go round. L. Ron Hubbard called it "lack of confront" (this is also why the area around the Flag Land Base has so long been known as a "dead zone").

However, I believe that at a subconscious level, people DO know that things suck. They don't like to admit it because it's actually a form of fear. Non-existence is safe, while the potential downside of awareness could be infinite.
But now it's finally possible to "opt out" from the torture of human existence to some extent. Birth control shifts the "cost" (or benefit) of this radical solution to the next generation.
This is the deep cause of the falling birth rate - something which has never happened before in history or prehistory.

Singularity Soon